A blunted spear: the failure of the African National Congress/South African Communist Party revolutionary war strategy 1961–1990

Following a classic Maoist revolutionary war strategy, with both Guevarian and Giapist elements, the African National Congress (ANC) attempted to overthrow, through revolutionary violence, the apartheid government of South Africa. This struggle, which began in 1961 and was eventually suspended in mid-1990, witnessed the general failure of the ANC strategy: for all intents and purposes – and despite all claims to the contrary – the ANC and its armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (‘Spear of the Nation’) failed to overthrow of the South African state by force, the purpose for which it was intended. The strongest indication of this was that the ANC was never able to establish (Phase One of revolutionary war) effective internal underground structures of any duration within South Africa. This much was clear when the ANC was unbanned in 1990, but was recognised long before: in October 1986, the ANC stated that ‘despite all our efforts, we have not come anywhere near the achievement of the objectives we set for ourselves’. The ANC's ‘use’ of the UDF structures inside South Africa, in this sense, was not the same thing as establishing effective internal ANC/MK structures in the way that they intended. The ANC/South African Communist Parry (SACP) also underestimated continuously the ability of the government to react strongly and viciously to the ‘Revolutionary Onslaught’: at least part of the blame for this underestimation lay with the promotion of the armed struggle over all other activities. In eidle, the ANC/SACP were unable to reach back effectively into the country to lead a revolution. In the end, the apartheid regime was defeated not by guerrilla action or by revolutionary overthrow, but through the mass action of millions of South Africans.     

Trading coups for civil war

This paper investigates civil conflict as a product of the survival strategies of African leaders. Specifically, the paper offers a theory of risk substitution that predicts coup-fearing leaders will undermine the military effectiveness of the state when making an effort to extend their own tenure. While ‘coup-proofing’ practices have often been noted as contributors to political survival, considerably less attention has been paid to the influence of these strategies on other forms of conflict. Utilising data from a number of cross-national datasets, the analyses show that having a higher number of ‘coup-proofing’ counterweights significantly worsens a state's civil conflict prospects. A brief consideration of multiple episodes of conflict further suggests that in addition to coup-proofing undermining the counterinsurgency capacity of the state, some leaders are simply indifferent to – or can even potentially benefit from – the existence of an insurgency.     

THE NEPAD AFRICAN PEER REVIEW MECHANISM

The idea of establishing a permanent Pan-African army has for long caught the imagination of Africans as a potential solution to many of their continent's manifold security problems. This feature tracks the quest for a Pan-African military force through the past five decades covering the feeble attempts of Africa's freedom fighters to join forces, the repeated failure to establish an African High Command (AHC) in the early years of decolonisation, the subsequent inability of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Defence Commission to agree on a common defence structure, and the various fruitless initiatives of the international community to set up a Pan-African peacekeeping force in the 1990s. On the basis of this retrospective journey, the article argues that the African Union's current initiative to establish an African Standby Force (ASF) based on five regionally administered standby brigades should be seen in the tradition of this long quest and not as a groundbreaking new conceptual development, as argued by some. It further contends that even though the ASF is conceptually closer to the Standby Arrangement of the United Nations (UNSAS) than to a Pan-African army as envisioned by leading Pan-Africanists such as Kwame Nkrumah, it nonetheless marks a substantial development in Africa's continental self-emancipation which should be greeted and supported by Africans and the international community alike.     

The African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis: conceptual breakthrough or anti-imperialist phantom?

The creation of an African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis (ACIRC) is a sign of Africa's willingness to take its destiny into its own hands. Presented as a reaction to the slowness of the development of the African Standby Force (ASF), it is also a response to some of the ASF's conceptual weaknesses. This decision reflects a wish to establish an instrument better equipped to deal with the challenges Africa is facing. Departing from the (sub)regional logic of the ASF results from a desire to take into account the transnational nature of threats, while its enlarged mandate is meant to offer Africa the capacity to intervene in all kinds of conflicts, including by undertaking peace enforcement activities. But the obstacles on the road towards the actual creation and mobilisation of this capacity should not be underestimated. These include material difficulties, but also political tensions, between ‘small’ and ‘big’ states as well as between the African Union and subregional organisations. The risk then is high that the ACIRC, whose announcement came as a reaction to France's intervention in Mali, ends up joining the ranks of the many ‘anti-imperialist’ phantoms haunting the history of the Organization of African Unity/African Union (OAU/AU). Confronted by events considered ‘neocolonial’ initiatives, African actors have indeed traditionally reacted by launching grand projects that never got off the ground. However, by actually establishing this new instrument, they may also demonstrate that times have definitively changed.     

The German wars of liberation 1807–1815: The restrained insurgency

In the Age of Napoleon, ‘small wars’ and ‘revolutionary war’ were closely connected. There were, however, different strands of this phenomenon: speaking professionally, conservative officers condemned small wars as an irregular regression to previous less disciplined forms of warfare. The Prussian state continually tried to discipline and regulate spontaneous risings. Yet the irregular character of small wars offered the opportunities for a less complex way of fighting, thus enabling the arming of the ‘people’ to fight. Individual undertakings, such as Ferdinand von Schill's doomed campaign in 1809, were designed to spark off a general popular uprising. But they were cheered by many and supported by few. Meanwhile, Neidhardt von Gneisenau conceived guerrilla-style Landsturm home-defence forces, which were designed for an irregular people's war. These concepts were put into practice in the ‘war of freedom’ – or ‘war of liberation’ – in 1813. Eventually both the mobilisation and the tactics remained regular, however, despite the emphatic appeal to a national ‘people's war’.     

Political transition to democracy

This paper argues that the crisis of electoral democracy in Zimbabwe and Cote d'Ivoire is a result of underlying structural and institutional deficiencies within national and regional multinational institutions. It assesses the extent to which they have been ‘enablers’ or ‘spoilers’ of electoral-based transitions to democracy. Yet it avoids generalisations of the security sector's involvement in political transitions. In terms of structure, the paper is divided into four sections. Section one will briefly discuss the theoretical perspectives of the election-democracy trajectory. It argues that although elections are a major variable for democracy, unless the ‘ecology of elections’ is conducive, elections may not be an instrument of transition to democracy. The second section analyses the militarisation of politics and the role of the security sector in aiding or stalling democratisation. Section three will assess the role of regional organisations such as the Southern African Development Community, Economic Community of West African States and the African Union in electoral-based political transitions in Africa. Lastly, the paper will discuss how the security sector and multinational African institutions can aid political transitions to democracy in troubled African countries.     

CIVIL SOCIETY AND VIOLENCE—HOW TO MANAGE IN THE TOWNSHIPS WITHOUT THE ARMY

This article discusses the validity of national security threats in Botswana and whether they justified the creation of the Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DISS), which has been controversial since its formation. Since its inception in 2008, the DISS has been accused of many human rights violations and politicisation. Without fully deliberating on the basis for its creation, some discourses have focused on the politicised operations without relation to what the DISS is supposed to be doing. The author works under the assumption that debates should be shaped by whether it was necessary to create the DISS, and, if so, how we can shape and steer debates on its oversight, management, reform and operations. This article argues that despite the politicisation of the DISS, Botswana's national security threats are both real and imagined; and that domestic threats to national security have moved from the conceptual ‘imagined’ category to the ‘real’. However, that in itself did not warrant the design and mandate of the DISS, and the article argues that it was external threats that really warranted the creation of a civilian intelligence agency. The article concludes that Botswana faces a plethora of external security threats – traditional and non-traditional – that warranted the creation and continuance of the DISS.     

QUANTIFYING GREED AND GRIEVANCE IN CIVIL WAR: THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

‘Greed’ vs. ‘grievance’ is weighed using a generally applicable methodology as motivations in the American War of Independence. Greed is quantified as the expected economic benefit of Independence – escaping colonial trade burdens and expected increased economic growth rates. Grievance is measured as willingness to pay to escape perceived political burdens. Quantification of the relative contributions is made possible by using estimates of expected war-costs. To the extent that the economic burden was insufficient to explain the War, the residual is ascribed to the grievance motivation. Both motives are shown to have contributed to the War, but grievance dominates.     

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and popular support: counterterrorism towards an insurgency nature

The PKK has been a prolonged problem in Turkey, and various measures have been adopted to diminish and end the violence. In addition to the impacts on violence, these policies have also had an impact on public opinion and ethnic awareness of Kurds in Turkey. This article analyzes these policies and their effects on electoral support for the PKK by examining the vote shares of the pro-PKK political parties in national and local elections. It concludes that Turkey has conceptualized the issue solely as a problem of terrorism, but the goal, strategy, organization, and format of violence used by the PKK reflect the nature of an insurgency. Therefore, it is argued that Turkey, by ignoring the insurgency features, has disregarded the legitimate parts of the cause and related popular support, and thus has responded mostly with deterrent measures apart from the reforms of recent years. Results have shown that policies of deterrence culminated in a steady level of support for the PKK indicating that low level of legitimacy – as they were perceived by the people – of the policies resulted in viable popular and political support for the PKK. Despite the recent accommodative reforms, the existence of pro-PKK parties rallying electoral support in the political arena provided sustained level activities in the conventional politics in Turkey's municipal and national political system, in which they pursue pro-PKK agendas, such as ‘Autonomy’ and ‘Confederation’ as well as activities to increase the distinction in identity around the ethnic consciousness for more popular support. Yet, no clear pattern is identified between violence level and popular support in the macro-scale.     

Choosing the Right Sidekick: Economic Complements to US Military Grand Strategies

ABSTRACT

Scholars and practitioners of grand strategy agree that the use of military force should be supplemented by appropriate economic policies. However, strangely few accounts of economic complements to military grand strategies have been presented in recent discourse on US grand strategy. This paper takes a first step to fill this information gap. I first assess the role that could be played by economic measures under two types of grand strategies – one focusing on the balance of power and the other emphasising influence and order. Second, I introduce what I call ‘the influence-capability dilemma’ and discuss tradeoffs in adopting certain economic policies in order to help the US sustain pre-eminence in the international system. Third, I discuss how the US should address this dilemma of economic means in dealing with the rising China.     

Smart Power and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces

Abstract

From Iraq to the Gulf of Aden and the South Pacific, this paper evaluates how far theoretical ideas about smart power manifest in operational missions of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF). To function within a ‘smart’ power context, this paper suggests that JSDF operates in ‘assisting’ mode, rather than the ‘threatening’ behavior of ‘hard’ power. JSDF also deployed alongside other Japanese ‘soft’ power tools – diplomatic, cultural, developmental, and NGOs, using tailored programs for different cultural and geographical contexts. Given constitutional constraints and public sensitivity towards coercive force, JSDF missions could be integrated more into a ‘whole-of-government’ approach advancing foreign policy goals through ‘smart power’.     

Civil–military relations in francophone Africa and the consequences of a mistaken analysis

The Building Security Overseas Strategy is at its core an ‘Intervention to end all Interventions’ – from a Western as well as an African perspective. Two of its main pillars are security sector reform in specific countries and systematic support to the development of the African Peace and Security Architecture. This article addresses the question why such efforts have met little success in francophone Africa. It argues that the failure of Western advisers to understand the sociological dynamics of African armed forces, shaped by a political culture based on personal loyalty to the leader, is at the root of the problem. In that context, the Huntingtonian-type distinction between the civilians and the military does not apply as military and civilians act in concert within common clientelism systems. As a result of the curtailing of the state-formation experience in most African countries, the military never had to demonstrate its performance as a state builder, nor did it have to bargain its legitimacy against the support of the citizens. Partnership in that context will remain a misnomer, at least until African military can credibly demonstrate commitment to state-building grounded in a broad-based social contract.     

AFRICA'S TRIPLE TRANSITION

Sub-Saharan Africa has witnessed the end of foreign colonial rule, the rise and fall of autocratic political regimes, and the disappearance of statist command economies. The challenges were to turn populations into coherent nations owing allegiance to the state; to democratise the state structures that govern these populations; and to liberalise the rules that regulate economic transactions. An important source to assess these prospects are the views and attitudes of ordinary Africans. This essay reflects on the original data derived from a crossnational research project. Nine African states were surveyed between 1999 and 2000. An attempt is made to gather some propositions from the analysis of the data. Many present serious challenges to common wisdom about African politics. It appears that the process of nationbuilding has created coherent political communities with high levels of national identity; that democratising the state in Africa builds on existing indigenous demands from ordinary Africans; and that economic liberalisation proceeds in the face of a mixed set of values about market and state.     

Making Jihad or Making Money? Understanding the Transformation of Dagestan’s Jamaats into Organised Crime Groups

While terrorist and insurgent groups have often combined anti-state subversion with ‘purely‘ criminal activities in order to obtain the financial means to wage their ideological struggle, little is known about the transformation of such groups into non-ideological organised crime groups (OCG) with close links to authorities. This holds particularly for jihadist groups that have on ideological grounds ruled out collaboration with their archenemies – ‘infidels’ and ‘apostates’. Using unique ethnographic data from Russia’s Dagestan, this article explores the causes and contexts of the gradual transformation of some of Dagestan’s jihadist units – jamaats – into organised crime groups collaborating with local authorities.     

THE AU PLAN ON TERRORISM

At a senior officials' meeting held in Algiers from 11–14 September 2002, the African Union proved ready and able to provide the political cohesion and sense of purpose needed for Africa to combat terrorism. While member states inevitably played to a global gallery in demonstrating their commitment to the ‘war on terrorism’, the practical counter-terrorist proposals adopted at the meeting substantially address Africa's security challenges. The resulting Plan of Action on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism focuses on state building and inter-governmental co-operation, to literally and figuratively close Africa's borders to terrorist activities. Implementing the plan will be a tough challenge for many African governments, especially to ensure that their counter-terrorist measures adhere to international and regional human rights accords.     

Maritime security and capacity building in the Gulf of Guinea: On comprehensiveness,gaps, and security priorities

It is widely acknowledged that maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea is a highly complex phenomenon involving a variety of issues (legal deficiencies, inadequate military equipment, and challenges like corruption, political unrest and youth unemployment) as well as a multiplicity of external responders. To make sense of the impact that external actors have when they address this complex problem through various maritime capacity building endeavours, this article argues that there is a need to understand the attractiveness of capacity building vis-à-vis the widely acknowledged need for a comprehensive approach, as well as the difficulties of translating the potential for comprehensiveness into practice (as important aspects of the problem remain largely unaddressed). Further, it is argued that it is important to appreciate that even if these gaps – i.e. the aspects that maritime capacity building currently leaves unaddressed – represent a ‘failure’ to deliver a comprehensive response, they are at the same time illustrative of how the maritime capacity building activities of various external actors also ‘succeed’ in having an impact on this regional security landscape – for instance, by influencing how certain aspects of this multifaceted problem are prioritised, whilst others are only marginally addressed, if at all.     

Ruminations of a pachyderm or what I learned in the counter‐insurgency business

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has created a pervasive climate of fear in northern Uganda. This study addresses the purpose of this conduct. Diverging from the traditional ‘greed-grievance’ approach to the study of new wars, the LRA's behaviour is analyzed from a strategic perspective. Specifically, the article focuses on the LRA's use of mutilation, abduction, surprise, and unpredictable attacks. The conclusion is that the LRA is strategically using fear as a force multiplier, to further its organizational survival, and as a way to fight a political ‘dirty war’.     

‘Blackmailing the army’ – ‘Strategic Military Refusal’ as policy and doctrine enforcement: the formation of a new security agent

The study shows how ‘strategic military refusal’ in Israel developed as a rational and institutional means to influence security policies. As opposed to the perspective that sees military refusal as a spontaneous individual act, the study illustrates how organizations operate to distribute military refusal in order to pressure decision-makers to change their military policies. This strategy has proven to be effective when the military is involved with groups that threaten it with refusal – which threatens the military's operational ability and its official and apolitical image. These include soldiers whose civilian authorities, rather than their military commanders, are perceived as an epistemic authority regarding security issues. The case study refers to the impact of strategic military refusal in Israel on security policies and the military doctrine. This was influenced by leftist groups, which, although they belonged to the parliamentary opposition, had dominant presence in the military ranks. Furthermore, the study examines the effect of the use of strategic military refusal on the model of military recruitment.     

Strength in Numbers: The Labour Government and the Size of the Polaris Force

Previous historical accounts have simplified the Labour government's decision to commission a four-boat strategic nuclear deterrent, or ‘Polaris force’, in early 1965. Utilising previously classified sources, this article shows that a number of key strategic concerns led the decision-making process. Nevertheless, broader economic and diplomatic considerations were also important in determining the size of the Polaris force. A tremendous balance of payments deficit and ongoing debates regarding levels of conventional and nuclear involvement in NATO certainly influenced the government's final decision. Moreover, competing strategic and economic interests resulted in continued debate throughout the decision-making process.     

A Cursed and Fragmented Island: History and Conflict Analysis in Bougainville,Papua New Guinea

This paper is a review piece examining the main factors responsible for the civil war, lasting from 1988 to 1998, on Bougainville island, an autonomous region in Papua New Guinea. History, economy, and social aspects of the island – especially traditional society features, mining activities, the effects of colonization and industrialization – are highlighted. The aim of the article is to identify which factors best explain the outbreak of the conflict. The main assumption is that no single factor can explain the civil war, as these elements require a comprehensive analysis. The ‘resource curse’ theory, i.e. the presence of natural resources leading to economic failure, and the existence of ethnic cleavages, are proposed as explanations, although further factors must also taken into account. Finally, the analysis helps to contextualize the unfolding events in Bougainville and its path to democratization.